i So The Irish Naturalist. May, 



Phascolion Strombi in Dublin Bay. 



While examining the material of a dredging made in 10 fathoms off 

 Bullock Harbour, Dublin Bay, in October last, I came across a dead and 

 much-worn shell of Strombus pes-pelecani, the familiar Pelican's foot or 

 Shoulder-of-Mutton shell, now generally known to conchologists as Apor- 

 rhais pes-pelecani, and was about to cast it aside as worthless when something 

 peculiar in the aspect of the mouth arrested me. On closer scrutiny the 

 mouth was found to be neatly sealed by a species of sandy concrete, 

 smooth and hard, in the middle of which appeared a well-formed circular 

 orifice, evidently a work of art. A hand-glass showed that the chamber 

 into which this orifice led was not empty. Glimpses of a pale flesh- 

 coloured body appeared within, so the shell was thrown into a bowl of 

 sea-water to await developments, while 1 went on with the sifting of the 

 dredging. On visiting the bowl a couple of hours later I found that the 

 tenant of the shell was in a lively condition. A cylindrical flesh-coloured 

 body, about J-inch in diameter, filled up the circular orifice, and as this 

 body was closely watched a smooth slender worm-like proboscis was 

 seen to issue from its centre, pass out from the orifice, and rapidly 

 lengthening go deftly twining and feeling round the bod)' of the shell 

 in a manner oddly expressive of intelligent seeking after information. 

 The advance of this worm-like trunk was effected by a rapid process of 

 eversion, and its retreat, when the animal was startled, by an inverse 

 process'of introversion, precisely similar in appearance to the operation 

 by which a glove finger is turned inside out and then restored to its 

 original position. 



The animal lived with me for four days, and although I was at no time 

 so fortunate as to witness an eversion of the trunk so complete as to ex- 

 hibit the row of tentacles crowning its extremity, the identity of the 

 creature with Sipnnculus bernhardus of Forbes's History of the British Star- 

 fishes, S. Strombi of Montagu, was placed beyond doubt. On the morning 

 of the fourth day of its captivity, the animal being apparently dead, I 

 removed the shell from the water, wrapped it up in a strip of blotting- 

 paper, and carried it in my pocket all day as I wished to show it to a 

 friend interested in marine zoology. In the evening as an experiment I 

 restored it to the bowl of sea- water, and was surprised to find the animal 

 still living. It made a feeble attempt to evert its trunk, and when a 

 portion of the hard concrete sealing of the mouth of the shell was re- 

 moved so as to lay bare the broader basal part of the animal, this began 

 to swell. Within a couple of hours it had assumed the shape and size 

 of a small Thyone papulosa (a species of vSea-Cucumber), and its walls 

 became so distended and translucent that the convolutions of he trunk 

 coiled inside became clearly visible. 



Irish records for this species are apparently very few. It was dredged 

 by Dr. J. R. Kinahan in i860, somewhere between Kingstown and Bray 

 {Report of Brit. Assoc, 1861), and by Mr. W. I. Beaumont on two occasions 

 between 1895 and 1S98, in Valencia Harbour, in from 3 to 7 fathoms, and 

 outside of the harbour in Dingle Bay, in 45 fathoms {Proc* R.I.A., 3rd 



